Chapter Eleven
“I said it, and you’ll have to come back with me if you want your friend to be healed in time.”
They turned to the voice and saw that The Accidentals weren’t the only people on this side.
The girl seemed to be about their age. Not as striking as Poe, but seemingly familiar, especially in the eyes. About five-foot-three, long, licorice-colored hair hanging without a trace of curl, she stood nonchalantly watching the group as if she met five misfits from another dimension all the time. But those eyes...who did she remind him of?
“Um…hi,” Muddy managed to say.
“Who are you?” Poe asked. “And can you please help us? He’s hurt.” She pointed to Leo’s leg just in case the girl didn’t comprehend words.
The stranger tilted her head as if to gauge the bassist’s condition then back at Muddy. “I’m Lyra,” she said in a voice that sent shivers down his back, so smooth and lilting, as if it slid from her throat on waves of silk. “I think we can help your friend, but we’ll need to get him to the town. He was bitten by the grass?”
Otis turned to the guitarist and whispered, “We just crossed over into some parallel world with tons of weird crap and they don’t even have a name for that stuff that attacked Leo?”
“Why should we speak differently?” she asked, her tone staying the same. “Where are you from? Obviously, not from around here.” This time a slight grin cracked her expression.
“She knows?” Corey whispered. “How? Wait a minute.” He leaned in closer and squinted at her. “Man, she looks so much like…”
Otis hummed a song he knew for ages.
This time she giggled a little, but still remained far enough from them. “It’s been awhile, but we’re used to visitors. Actually, I’m surprised you got this far. Most don’t. Either you’re pretty skilled or just very lucky.”
“I think it’s a little of both,” Poe replied. “We had a little help.
“I know,” Lyra answered, her expression unchanged.
But how? Muddy wondered. Was she watching when we came with Silver Eye?
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
“Didn’t what?” Poe asked.
“Didn’t watch you when you came here with Silver Eye.”
What the...?
Otis hopped to his spindly, short legs. “You spying on us? Did you sic those big goons on us?”
She just gazed with an unchanging pair of alluring eyes. “No. What lives out here have knocked off plenty of our people in town. I stay clear of them. You should, too.”
“What do you mean? Knocked off? Killed?” Corey asked.
She averted her gaze.
“A lot?”
“Corey,” Poe chided, slapping at his arm. “Get a clue!”
Lyra visibly shook it off. “We need to get him some help,” she said, pointing at their bassist.
Muddy’s body trembled as he sought his voice. “Is he going to be okay?
She looked right into his soul and he swore he heard, “He will die if the poison reaches his heart. Many do not make it with a bite like that, but I have hope.”
The rest of the group did not react.
Did they hear what she said?
“You know they didn’t,” she answered and he realized the voice had bypassed his ears, straight into his head.
Holy cow…
“They’ll hear if I want them to. Right now, I need you to understand and not worry them.” Her eyes told him not to ask the details of her skill.
“Come with me,” she said aloud. “We need to get him to the city—now.”
And so they followed.
She led them about two miles along the winding, but much-widened path. The area lay open and as free from obvious disaster as walking through a field of dozing kittens.
Never once did Corey flinch as he carried Leo over his shoulder.
Muddy remembered he once got two stitches from a kitten that his mom adopted.
Of course, he worried.
As they passed the final grove of trees, a city appeared. Resembling something from pioneer times, houses built of logs and wood planks stood everywhere. Towers rose in the four corners of the development, which reached as far as their eyes could see. It must have been at least a mile or so across and possibly twice as long. Why people always imagined a city in an unknown land to be medieval, he had no idea. Maybe it was because of all those fantasy novels and movies. It seemed as though most movie makers couldn’t imagine that any other civilization could exist as anything but something out of King Arthur. Were people so ignorant that they couldn’t imagine another culture was capable of building a society to rival their own?
Yet there it was, something straight out of the late 1800s, not the age of The Sword in the Stone and Merlin. Within the quartet of towers lay a scene straight out of the Old West. Buildings a few stories high reached into the clear blue sky above, nestled in between the huddles of small houses and log cabins. Busy, but not crowded, a small market bustled in the town square. Colors bloomed outward in the shades of the basic spectrum—blue, green, red, orange, yellow, purple—some white, but very little black.
She halted before she reached the throng of citizens. “I think it’s best if no one sees us.”
“Why?” Muddy wondered if more monsters lived there, ones in human skins.
She looked around. “Let’s just say that people in this town don’t look too kindly on your folk. They blame you for the shape we’re in now.”
“And what shape is that?”
“You don’t want to know, but we once had music here. Now, if one is caught even humming a tune from someone who visited here, they… Well, they’re not here anymore.”
Muddy froze and knew the others felt the same chill.
People, more humans, strolled through the mini-streets and congregated in the city’s heart, ebbing and flowing like vital blood through arteries. Clad in outfits of those seven colors, mixed and matched in songs of different fashions, men, women, and kids carried various wares and baskets. Muddy felt as though a rainbow had exploded in front of his eyes and burst into life. Most of whom he could see strode in peaceful strides, some smiling, but more in slow, steady gaits that suggested something less than happiness lie underneath.
“What is that?” Corey asked, pointing at an odd-shaped, prism-type thing that just sat in the center of the town square. People revolved around it like fearful moons, drawn to it but never daring to orbit too close.
The band stared, waiting for Lyra to explain, but she simply kept walking without even a flinch. So they turned to him. Why, he had no idea. If they only knew the fear he hid in his heart…
“Don’t look at me, I suck at geometry.” Something about it scared the living hell out of him. It looked innocuous, but somehow it’s presence felt much like the tip of an iceberg. What lay beneath, he had no clue, but the feeling that seemed to reach out like invisible fingers nearly froze him in his steps.
Why aren’t you telling us about that…prism thing? He reached out, hoping her apparent telepathy was on the way one more time.
She didn’t even gaze his way.
Atop an ebony platform which stood about two meters tall in a series of decreasing squares, the crystalline pyramid of hexagonal sides, balanced itself—inverted. From his vantage point, the glass-like object appeared to be hovering an inch or so above the platform. Was it wires? An invisible magnetic field like the one he saw in the science center? Something about it freaked him, but no one seemed to notice it even existed there, completely juxtaposed into the middle of their odd little world.
“Lyra,” Poe said, as a question.
“Just follow me,” she answered. “We need to get your friend to care, now. I know someone who will help, discreetly.”
“But…”
“Now. You don’t know the power of the poison.” Her voice showed more tension than with the previous comment, and it had little to do with Leo’s bite.
He could tell both of them wanted to talk about the strange object and the things it suggested, but neither said a word. He prayed they would have time to discuss it later before anything else happened.
A young couple stood inside the house when they arrived. Greetings were exchanged, but not names. Both parties regarded each other with cautious looks. Muddy could swear he recognized something in their faces. Did everyone here look like they were related to someone famous back home?
The young man spoke. “You know Silver Eye Watkins?”
“Yeah,” Muddy replied, attempting to sound strong. “Silver Eye trained us, but we’re here to find my brother. He came over two nights ago.”
The couple shared an odd look.
“Just bring in your friend. I take care of most of the healing in town.”
“Will he be okay?”
“He’ll be fine. We know how to cure the ills the forest brings as long as the poison hasn’t reached the heart. He won’t feel any more pain in a few minutes.”
Didn’t that exist as a cheesy line in so many horror and mob movies?
* * * *
The band waited in the front room while the couple disappeared with Leo. Soon, Muddy felt himself dozing off, but before he fell asleep, he noticed the others were already zonked out as well.
A loud noise awoke him some time later.
“I’m sorry,” the man said.
Anxiety flooded Muddy. “What do you mean? Sorry for what?”
“I sent my wife out for supplies and someone followed her back. I guess someone somewhere here knew you’d crossed over. You weren’t exactly quiet.”
“What does that mean for us?” Corey grabbed his horn.
Lyra shared a pale look with her friends. “Nothing, if we can get you back in time.”
Poe stood, sneaking a gaze out the window. “And if we don’t?”
“Then you’ll find out what happens when the music dies around here.”
* * * *
They pushed open the front door and gasped at what lie before them. The streets of the town bustled with an overflow of people. Men, women and kids all wore expressions that said the same thing.
“They’re not going to let us out of here,” Muddy said. The guitar shook in his hands, sounding weird notes.
“What, no torches and pitchforks?” Otis quipped.
“Shut up. Just let me think about this for a second.”
Yet the crowd advanced. They seemed wary, but intent on reaching the boys.
“They don’t seem to be armed. We can run for it,” Otis offered.
They looked behind them at the road to the forest’s edge where the path began. It was maybe a hundred feet to a different kind of danger, but also a long way home.
“We gotta try it, Muddy.” Otis knew his friend only felt confident when called by his nickname. Music gave them all a boost of self-esteem. “Let’s go for it.”
Muddy, confident as he was in his own sprinting ability, knew Otis wouldn’t make it and everyone else knew it as well. If the drummer hit a hole or rock, an ankle might snap in a heartbeat.
“Okay, you go first. In the meantime, I’m gonna give them a little entertainment,” he said, unslinging his odd guitar and swinging it into position.
“No.”
But Muddy turned to the crowd, pick twirling in his hands. “Get. Out. Of. Here.”
Something in Muddy’s voice must have reasoned with Otis as he began to amble backwards toward the forest. The mob of townsfolk advanced with each step. He gripped both sticks and tapped them nervously.
I hope these guys like Ozzy. Off the rails?
Muddy’s fingers went into motion and the famous riff roiled out in the crowd’s direction. The low, train-sounding melody boomed, the leaves of the trees brushed back by the low pitches. The suddenly people halted, as though in shock over hearing music in an existence that obviously did without. He finished the two-bar-part and repeated it.
“Hey!” He called to the drummer. “I think it’s work—”
The throng of people began moving again, this time with an angry purpose to their steps, though no one uttered a word. It was as if someone else thought for them.
“Run, Muddy!” The voice came from within, not from his friend and he sensed an urge to head to toward the forest.
Not one to argue with reason, Muddy did what the voice told him. He pumped his legs as hard as he could and reached the beginning of the trail where he saw Otis and slid to a stop.
“Duck!” A new voice rang in his ears.
Something sailed through the air from the left side of the woods, through the trees and over the crowd.
It struck the prism hard, sending a shower of sparks into the villagers. The softball-sized rock careened off it and knocked out one of the guards. Colors of the entire box of Crayola Sixty-Four and more wafted over the village and shook the ground beneath them. If they weren’t already on the forest floor, the percussion would have knocked them head over heels.
“What?” Muddy clung tight to the grass. “Who? Did they break that thing?”
Lyra looked up at both boys, smiling.
“I had help. Not all of us here follow the rules. Some of us were born after the change.”
Otis looked back at her. “Before I ask or seem to care about whatever you’re talking about, can you get us back to the crossroads? Leo’s hurt and Corey can’t maneuver both Poe and him through that killer linguini stuff.”
Again, that smile. Why did females always shut him up with a great smile?
“Already done. I headed them off and made sure they navigated safely to the cross-trails.”
“It’s called the crossroads,” Otis corrected.
“Whatever,” she waved him off. “Regardless, they won’t be safe forever in that forest. Get your butts in motion and play your song to get back home.”
“But—”
“Now!”
“We can’t leave until you tell us what happened back there, what’s going on in your town.”
That smile. “Next time.”
Otis laughed an uneasy laugh. “Honey, we ain’t coming back here.”
Muddy slapped his chest. “Zack’s still here, somewhere. We’ll be back,” he replied to Lyra.
“I know. I knew that before you even got here.”
“But, why did they want us? At least tell me that.”
Her face turned to stone. “They believe you bring the Dark Muse. Your friend once did.” She turned and pushed him away. “They’re coming. Both of us will be here to help you next time.”
“Both?”
As much as Muddy wanted to interrogate the annoying, enigmatic girl, he knew he had to get home ASAP. They followed her nymph-like movements through the trails, careful to step where she stepped. They saw glimpses of “things” in the trees, in the grasses and bush.
Around them, they heard a rising wave of “things” coming that didn’t sound happy. Hungry maybe, but not happy. Were they those drummer trolls? Or worse?
“Muddy,” Poe pulled Muddy out of la-la-land. “I think you should play now.”
“Yeah,” Otis chipped in. “I don’t want to be something’s finger food here.”
Corey’s big hand landed on Muddy’s shoulder. “Send us home, man. Please?”
Someone below him grunted and moaned. Leo. Muddy gazed down and was afraid of what he saw. “Sorry, bud. First stop is the ER.” The unlucky bassist du jour looked horrible.
The second would be to visit someone and apologize for their stupid mistake.
Muddy began the song, the same one they’d played when Silver Eye helped them leave the first time. The others joined in once the scene began to shimmer. All at once, Lyra disappeared into the underbrush, the drummer beasts burst through and something else that would haunt the band for many nightmares to come.
Muddy clenched the vision out of his mind and played until he felt the familiar pull of home.
The journey back took less time than the first.
“Is that all?” Corey asked. “Seems like something’s missing.”
“Like a wasted trip.”
Muddy stood firm. “No. We learned that we could cross over by ourselves. When we rest up, we plan this out. Now we have an ally over there. Maybe she can help lead us to Zack.”
Poe wrapped herself up in her arms. “It does feel weird, Muddy.”
“Aren’t we back?” he asked. “And safe?” He looked down at the wilting bassist. “Okay, almost totally safe.” No one complained. It had been a harrowing experience, but they’d made it back in one piece and made a new friend. Or two?
Otis fetched the backpack with their stuff.
“You’re not going to believe this. It’s only five minutes after eight.”
Classes began at 8:30 A.M. every morning.
“Then it’s all gravy. Let’s get Leo to the hospital and then meet during fourth period to debrief.”
But he knew the song would not remain the same.
* * * *
Muddy floated through the school day on an air of confidence. After surviving the morning, he was charged up and ready to return to the Crossroads to save his brother. Before first period, they had called 911. Otis had volunteered to stay with Leo, assuring the band that he’d make up a story about a dog attack. The rest of them managed to make the late bell with no one suspecting a thing. Nothing that any of the bullies or moron teachers did in periods one through three could burst Muddy’s bubble.
Then he stepped through the door of Room 201 and everything changed. The group sat waiting for him, faces tight with stress. Otis had his phone in his hand, shaking.
“What,” he said. “Is it Leo? He’s not…”
Poe gripped the edge of the table and sighed. “No, Edgar.”
She called me Edgar? Why?
“He’s still alive,” Otis said. “He managed to avoid the weird questions the doctors asked, but he’ll probably never have the nerve to play bass again.”
Like he would want to after our trip?
Poe looked him in the eye. “Corey rode his bike to see Silver Eye before school today.”
“Oh-oh.”
Corey shivered in his seat, a sight Muddy had never witnessed before.
Poe’s knuckles turned white with tension. “Besides being PO’d at us for being stupid and arrogant, he sat quietly for a long time before asking Corey one simple question. A question that he already knew the answer to.”
“Which was?” Muddy wanted to end this mystery, now.
“You—”
Otis broke in, his face whiter than normal. “You forgot to close the door last night.”